Peter Bassett: MPs’ Travel Bills - what The Post reported and what it didn’t

The Post’s report on MPs’ travel costs looks, at first glance, like accountability journalism. It is full of numbers, tables, quarterly breakdowns and party responses. What it lacks is judgement — and more importantly, curiosity.

The headline figure is that MPs spent $3.4 million on domestic travel in the nine months to September 2025, with ministers adding another $1.86 million.

Readers are told this works out at “more than $1 million every three months”, but the figures are scattered across so many paragraphs that no one ever sees the full cost in one place.

Put plainly: MPs’ travel, accommodation and transport costs are now running well north of $10 million a year once ministers, allowances and former MPs are included. That is not opinion. It is arithmetic. Reporter Julie Jacobsen leaves the reader to join the dots.

More importantly, the newspaper reports totals while avoiding the only comparison that matters: cost per MP.

That omission is not trivial. It is the difference between transparency and camouflage.

A new Taxpayers’ Union briefing paper, A Peek into the Books: MPs’ Expenses in Numbers, fills in what Jacobsen  does not. Based entirely on Parliament’s own disclosures, it shows that nearly $15 million in Parliamentary Service funding was spent over just 21 months on MPs’ travel, accommodation and transport.

As Taxpayers’ Union policy analyst Austin Ellingham-Banks puts it:

“Over just 21 months MPs have spent close to $15 million through the Parliamentary Service on travel, accommodation, and transport.”

Once the numbers are examined on a per-MP basis, uncomfortable patterns emerge — patterns the Post does not explore.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi recorded the highest individual Parliamentary Service expenditure of any MP over the period, totalling $273,681. He is followed by Labour MP Damien O’Connor and Green MP Hūhana Lyndon. Three of the top five spenders come from parties that routinely lecture voters about equity, climate responsibility and privilege.

Jacobsen reports this as trivia. It is not.

When a small party with few MPs racks up spending that rivals or exceeds much larger caucuses, the obvious question is not “how hard are they working?”, but why are their costs so much higher than their colleagues’?

Ellingham-Banks again:

“When some MPs cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars more than their colleagues, perfectly reasonable questions follow.”

Rather than pursue those questions, the Post prints party talking points — most notably from the Green Party — without scrutiny.

A Green Party spokesperson told Jacobsen that travel was unavoidable because MPs have “national responsibilities”, adding:

“The Green Party has a long-standing policy of investing in nationwide rapid rail for passengers and freight. Until such low-carbon transport options exist in Aotearoa NZ, our MPs will continue to offset all carbon miles travelled in the course of working with and for their communities.”

This is not an explanation. It is a deflection.

Citing “national responsibilities” without definition is like claiming you’re steering the waka while refusing to say where it’s going — the paddling continues, the fare goes up, and the passengers are told to trust the journey.

The most serious omission, however, is structural.

MPs’ Parliamentary Service spending is exempt from the Official Information Act. Taxpayers cannot see receipts, routes, accommodation details or justifications. They get totals — and that is all.

The Post does not mention this.

The Taxpayers’ Union does:

“Because Parliamentary Service spending has a special carve-out from the Official Information Act, the public aren’t allowed access to the receipts.”

This matters because it explains why these stories recur without resolution. Journalists can tally the bill, but they cannot examine how it was incurred — and too many appear content to stop there.

Ellingham-Banks puts it plainly:

“If those figures raise eyebrows, the obvious fix isn’t fewer questions; it’s more transparency. Every other public employee is subject to freedom of information law. MPs should be no exception.”

The Post’s report is not wrong. It is incomplete. It avoids per-MP comparisons that would expose disproportionate spending and substitutes party reassurance for financial scrutiny.

Publishing figures without interpretation flatters power. Journalism’s job is not to count the money. It is to ask why, who, and whether this makes sense.

On MPs’ expenses, The Post did the counting. It left the accountability undone.

Peter Bassett is an observer of media, politics and public institutions, writing on how narrative replaces scrutiny.